Thicker Than Water

I knew this guy too, I realised without surprise. It was the dead man who I’d met here on the first day, and then again on the footbridge at Love Walk. The man who’d talked in a woman’s voice and apologised as he’d tried to throw me off the bridge to my death.

I took a step towards him, and his gaze flicked momentarily to me. He nodded an acknowledgement, but his eyes narrowed as if the sight of me raised unpleasant memories.

‘I hope that makes us even,’ he said.

That voice again: trompe l’oeil for the ear. The wrong sex, the wrong age, the wrong - what? The wrong end of the map, is what. London, instead of Liverpool. Now instead of then. Drowned instead of waving.

‘I wasn’t sure what you were going to do,’ he went on. ‘If you’d tried to do an exorcism - I was going to kill you.’ There was a knife in his hand - a heavy, brutal thing, double-edged, that looked as though you could use it to gut and skin rhinoceroses. He held it up by way of illustration. ‘I would have had to, Fix. I’d already made up my mind. I know what you are. What you can do. You told me all about it a long time ago. But - you didn’t try to hurt him. You talked to him.’

His gaze Óe=" yowent to Matt again. Slowly and hesitantly, his hand came out as though to touch Matt’s cheek, but he stopped short and then withdrew it again.

‘It didn’t work,’ Matt said. ‘He won’t answer me. But perhaps if we both try—?’

The pale man drew in a breath. Or at least, his chest worked as though he was trying to draw in a breath. There was no accompanying sound, and for a moment he seemed unable to speak. His fists clenched, and his face twisted into something like a grimace. It took me a while to realise that he was trying to cry, as well as to breathe. Zombies can’t do either.

Finally he nodded. But at the same time he turned to me.

‘Alone,’ he said. ‘The two of us. Fix, you can’t be in on this. You, especially, can’t be in on this.’

I threw up my hands, palms out. ‘I’m good,’ I said, the raggedness of my voice betraying me. I was anything but good. I was exhausted and hurting. Blood from my shoulder had found its way down the inside of my sleeve and was now running the length of my fingers before pattering to the ground in a continuous drip-drip-drip that sounded unnaturally loud in the surrounding stillness. I felt the pressure of the demon’s attention, drawn by the blood. And then I felt its heavy, invisible gaze pass beyond me to the two figures at the centre of the walkway.

I backed away, one step at a time. Juliet and Coldwood came with me, Gary throwing a curious glance at the man who’d come out of nowhere to help us.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Was he part of the programme?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Pure serendipity. It has to work on our side every once in a while.’

‘What’s his name?’

I shook my head. It was a long story, I was ignorant of more than half of it, and I was too tired to explain the parts I did know.

‘The body belonged to a man named Roman,’ I said. ‘But that was a while back. I think he probably answers to Anita these days.’

Coldwood blinked. ‘Anita, as in—?’

‘Yeah. As in Anita Yeats. Kenny’s - whatever you want to call it. She died, and she came back.’

‘And she’s what, cross-dressing?’ Gary sounded pained.

‘More or less. Ninety-nine times out a of a hundred, a zombie clings to their own flesh: Anita chose the flesh of the bloke she was knocking off. Maybe if you ask her she’ll tell you why.’

I turned away from him to end the conversation, because it was scraping on a raw nerve right then. From behind us on the walkway, I heard Matt’s voice and then Anita’s. And then Matt’s again, broken as he spoke by what sounded like sobs. I needed to get further away. I might hear some oÓght hef the words, and I didn’t feel strong enough for that. I pushed the swing doors open and stepped back into Weston Block. For a moment the floor under me seemed to lurch and shift. I slumped against the wall, waiting for the dizziness to pass. It intensified instead. It was costing me a lot of effort just to stay on my feet.

‘Christ,’ I muttered. ‘I need a Band-Aid and some TCP.’

Gary inspected the knife that was still jutting out of my shoulder. ‘You need a hospital,’ he said. ‘If we take this out you’ll bleed like a stuck pig.’

By way of answer, I held up my blood-boltered hand. Coldwood was unimpressed. ‘That’s nothing compared to the Niagara you’re going to see when that knife comes out,’ he said. ‘Stay there, Fix. Do not fucking move.’

He got out his phone, dialled and started talking rapidly into it. But I couldn’t follow the words. Juliet was talking too, looking back the way we’d come, out onto the walkway. I turned my head - actually, turned my body because my neck didn’t seem able to move independently any more - and followed her gaze.